China's new grand plan to streamline oversight of its embattled environment
The blueprint calls for better-coordinated monitoring of the country's natural resources, consolidating tasks dispersed among various agencies
The mainland will consolidate environmental oversight as part of a master plan to overhaul the way it monitors its beleaguered natural resources, senior officials said in Beijing on Thursday.
A full text of the master plan is yet to be released, but Yang Weimin, a deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Finance and Economic Affairs, said it would go beyond traditional thinking on environmental protection, and set up new mechanisms to better coordinate efforts to counter pollution, protect the environment and conserve resources.
The plan, which was developed under the office's lead, would "shake up the vested interests of different government agencies", conforming with President Xi Jinping's calls for "high-quality reform plans", Yang said.
Responsibility for protecting and managing the mainland's environmental resources is scattered among several government agencies, creating bureaucratic loopholes.
Yang said such dispersed responsibilities would gradually be "unified and streamlined".
